Russian Culture Minister: Put Lenin Underground

Posted on Jun 13, 2012

The embalmed corpse of the father of Russian communism has been on display for curious tourists in a marble tomb in Moscow’s Red Square since shortly after his death in 1924. But Lenin may be given his final resting place in the coming months during Vladimir Putin’s third term as president.

This week, Russia’s new culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky, re-ignited the controversy when he told the radio station Ekho Moskvy that Lenin should be buried.

“A body should be interred in the earth,” Medinsky said, who added that he was in favour of making it a state occasion. “I would observe all the appropriate ceremonies. As [Lenin] was a senior public figure the funeral should happen with all fitting state rituals, distinctions and a military salute in a suitable place.”

With this observation, Medinsky was drawing a comparison with the treatment of Stalin, whose embalmed corpse was spirited away from its place beside Lenin one night in 1961 on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev and buried by the Kremlin’s walls.